Severe lag both in PvE and PvP PC NA

Gardarik · January 2021

Since update 17 last August I started having terrible lag in the game while prior to that I had been perfectly fine. I live in Japan and I have high-quality optical fibre internet connection (1000 Mb/s plan with hardware that allows bandwidth up to 1733 Mb/s). My "normal" ping to PC NA megaserver is around 240-260. However, since August I am having 400-700. The worst is the lag spikes that prevent me from doing any activities. Because of December change to PvP (12 ppl group limit and no outside group healing) I abandoned the game and now returned to try PvE I have ignored mostly until now only to find I cannot do dungeons and trials normally because of high ping and lag spikes. Needless to say that if in PvP lags are sometimes expected due to the amount of lolwuttery going on the screen, lags in PvE zones while idling with noone around or in dungeons with only 4 people are a terrible thing for the game.

Things to take into account:

My PC is fairly decent. Win10 Core i7 of 6700 4GHz (8 cores), 32 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB. I play on med-high graphic settings with stable 100 FPS in the corner. Settings are not the issue.
I am connected via Ethernet to Wi-Fi router that is connected to ISP modem (Rakuten using NTT East line) and then to the telephone line (this is how Internet is setup in Japan). The problem persists if I connect to the ISP modem directly via Ethernet, so it is not the router for sure.
Ping in other games on US servers is fine and stable ranging from 120-130 on West Coast to 170-180 Central US (which is still on average 70 lower than ESO ping).

Things I have tried:

Forwarding ports. On router, in my ESET Nod32 Antivirus, in Windows Defender - doesn't work. Previously, when I just moved to my new apartment and forgot to open the ports forwarding the ports did help. But this lasted until August 2019 Update 17 which turned PvP in unbearable lagfest any time of the day even with less people online. Now the lag is unbearable in PvE as well. THe only port forwarding I haven't tried is using /netsh command in cmd, but I doubt an average player would do that and I do not want to open ports this way to expose my PC's vulnerabilities directly via Windows.
Doing tracert and pathping - they give the basic info until reach Akamai anti-DDOS (that is the culprit in itself)

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.11.1
2 66 ms 54 ms 43 ms Tky67GFM1.vectant.ne.jp [163.139.102.106]
3 69 ms 65 ms 64 ms 163.139.122.117
4 42 ms 47 ms 63 ms 163.139.29.49
5 48 ms 50 ms 46 ms ae2.core1.nihonbashi.vectant.ne.jp [163.139.131.29]
6 70 ms 65 ms 51 ms 163.139.37.106
7 64 ms 60 ms 66 ms unknown.telstraglobal.net [210.57.59.237]
8 70 ms 68 ms 51 ms i-91.siko-core01.telstraglobal.net [202.84.148.69]
9 62 ms 60 ms 57 ms i-96.ntoh01.telstraglobal.net [202.47.216.106]
10 67 ms 65 ms 63 ms 210.176.33.18
11 62 ms 69 ms 68 ms po111.bs-a.sech-tyo.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.56.194]
12 68 ms 73 ms 63 ms a72-52-1-197.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.197]
13 49 ms 59 ms 67 ms ae120.access-a.sech-tyo.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.56.197]
14 68 ms 66 ms 62 ms a72-52-63-87.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.63.87]
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.

Might be the issue.

powercycling the network - useless, no alleviation of lags.
switching off antivirus - no change.
contacting ISP - no issues on their side.
flushed DNS - done multiple times, no change.
scanned for viruses - done using multiple antiviruses and utilities, anti-coin-mining software, network monitoring software - clear, no viruses, no suspicious traffic.
checked connection from friend's house in Tokyo area - similarly laggy and bad.
done ZOS troubleshooting utility - no effect.
Switching off addons - I am playing without addons bcs I no longer play PVP due to recent horrendous changes, thanks for that.
Contacted support and opening ticket - done twice to no effect. Last time my issue was "escalated to the technical team", also to no avail. Below you can see the reply:

We appreciate you bringing these issues to our attention. Please keep in mind that, we here at customer support, are here to do our best to help the players resolve their issues and get back to gaming through troubleshooting steps. We do not assist in the creation, maintenance, or stabilization of the game. This job is left to our developers, as they are the ones with the power to fix these types of issues. As a result, I will be passing this information along.

I do apologize for the not having an immediate fix as I can definitely understand how frustrating these issues must be. I can assure you that our developers are always looking for ways to improve our servers and the overall gaming experience. With that said, I will be passing your concerns along for the relevant team to review.

If you have any further questions or concerns in the meantime, please let us know and we would be happy to assist you!

Thank you for your continued interest and support!

And subsequently:

Thank you for your reply. I do apologize that our service has not been to your satisfaction. Please understand that our development is also able to look into issue such as lag and high ping if there is something on our end that can be adjusted to prevent it. I talk of the development team as a whole, but there are several different departments. Please be assured that your concerns will be able to make it to the correct team to review the issue.

I also highly encourage you to submit feedback tickets in game going forward as they are also forwarded to the correct teams for review. The more reports we receive on a certain issue, the more we are able to prioritize the issue.

If you have any further questions or concerns in the meantime, please let us know and we would be happy to assist you!

So as you can see, contacting support and opening tickets was also to no avail. Was also sad because they did not really conduct any diagnostics except for tracert and pathping as if the support did not really care (and I assume that is so).

So, having considered all of the above, I would like to ask:
1. Am I missing something? Anything else to try? Maybe someone has faced a similar issue and managed to alleviate the lag somehow.
2. Anyone else facing the same stuff or is it just me with my peculiar location in Japan and peculiar lag issue?

ZOS_Bill · January 2021

For the lag you are experiencing while playing, you can try the troubleshooting steps here and here which may improve your latency.

If the troubleshooting we've recommended isn't helping, you are welcome to proceed to opening a ticket with customer support. Our support team can investigate further into other possible causes for the lag.

Gardarik · January 2021

ZOS_BillE wrote: »

For the lag you are experiencing while playing, you can try the troubleshooting steps here and here which may improve your latency.

If the troubleshooting we've recommended isn't helping, you are welcome to proceed to opening a ticket with customer support. Our support team can investigate further into other possible causes for the lag.

This is interesting on your behalf to say when I literally indicated in the post that I have already tried everything in the "troubleshooting" as well as contacting the support that basically said they can't help and I should expect further development of the game which, given how the lag issue was addressed in Cyro, is neither likely to help nor keep me playing the game. The purpose for me to make this post is rather to seek something that I haven't tried.

Thanks for the try, tho.

belfong · January 2021

This week lag was bad for me too (400-500ms ping). Last week seemed ok (250-300ms). I’m not sure why! It feels like we need a maintenance update to fix these lag issues. I’m in South East Asia.

Jaimeh · January 2021

Gardarik wrote: »

The worst is the lag spikes that prevent me from doing any activities.

I have been experiencing spikes for almost half a year now; in the past they occured very infrequently, and weren't game-breaking, but now they happen multiple times within an hour, and they make any sort of serious playing impossible, because by the time the ping drops back to its normal values, my character is usually dead. It has gotten worse since the Markarth release, and besides causing playing to be unresponive/freezing, sometimes they lead to a disconnect. I never had this prior to the Markarth release, now it's happening in almost every session.

Syrpynt · January 2021

I have been having the same issues since end of December. I had crashes after Markarth but in it's place I'm getting lag spikes instead.

For example: It jumps from 134 to 999+ on ESO's ping interface. It takes sometimes 10 to 20 seconds for anything to happen like unsheathing weapons or getting on my mount. It's horrid. Tonight is the worst I've seen it.

I really hope they upgrade or fix the servers soon. The game is basically unplayable most times.

belfong · January 2021

Sometimes I wonder how many people outside of NA that sub to ESO? Perhaps the number of people is low, which is the reasons they didn’t put additional servers in Oceania or say, Singapore. I did sub for ESO but have recently stopped. I don’t think it’s fair for me to pay monthly when I have bad ping and kept dying in dungeons or trials, not because of my lack of skills or anything but that I couldn’t react. What’s worse is I played a Stam Nightblade and reaction is key to survivability.

NebelLei · January 2021

I'm also experiencing such disgusting lag this evening, alongside with three friends of mine (we live in one city (Kyiv, Ukraine), but have, of course, different PCs, addons & internet providers). My connection is perfect (ping 1), game worked perfectly fine, like, 10 hours ago, and now it is impossible to write in chat / recieve mail / do dungeons & even open world. Got a crit in public dung with unstable connection mistake, lol. Oh and just a sec ago stood in Belkarth, and my ping jumped from 100 to 999+, pausing on 234, 500... Thank gods I m,anaged to do the daily crafting writs before ESO became hell.

It is not the addons, not my internet, not my computer. As mentioned above, it is definitely on ESO side, and playing the game now is, well, impossible the least. I'm just surprised with how few left comments on forum on this topic, since loooooots of people use ESO Plus.

jaklang · January 2021

I am from PS4 NA. I too am having lag. It is horrible just like you all said. I feel helpless everytime this happened. I have gone to the extend in believing that i am under DDos attack. I looked up the net and read players can get other players IP address easily on PS4 and they will make a DDos attack to kick the player offline.

i read that getting VPN could be one of the ways to hide IP address and not get attacked. I am not IT specialist but anyone using VPN here? or feel VPN could help on this matter ?

Olupajmibanan · February 2021

I suffer periodic ping spikes during each event. The worst is Witches Festival, but Midyear Mayhem is also terrible. I tried everything and talking from 3-year experience of latency problems during events, the only thing that helps is waiting till event ends. 2 days after each event my ping returns to normal stable value without any spikes.

Crappy servers, that's all I have to say.

Rust_in_Peace · February 2021

Same problem. Lag every single day around the same time. It's not on my side and I don't need to do any troubleshooting. Fix your *** servers.

jaklang · February 2021

I went to eu and i can play fine. Something doesn't feels right. The server selectively decides who to kick and who not to kick.